GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2) Read online

  The one thing they are not well equipped to fight, however, is a superheated steam explosion happening inside of them. Douglas is covered in slime, and although the liquid contains an amazing blend of macromolecules, complex biomatter and organic nanomachines, it is still mainly water. The dephlogistonation spell rips a good tenth of the beast’s internal matter into its sphere of influence, starting the process of turning the water into the depleted version of phlogiston. A hundred liters of water is turned into steam, the liquid turning into gas that want to occupy around seventeen hundred times its previous volume.

  Douglas, being at the center of this explosion, is suddenly freed from his captivity. The bone plates are shot outwards, turning the Histaff apex predator into a fragmentation grenade. Red goop paints a large portion of the ruined town a nice shade of pink as a small mushroom cloud rises to the heavens above the startled skull. Douglas falls to the ground, landing in a steaming puddle of red muck with an undignified splash.

  Feeling like he should blink, the skeleton looks around. Ruins tower above him, dwarfing the diminished skull. Grey monstrosities made from shattered glass and crumbling concrete block the majority of the sky, their jagged silhouettes painting stark contrasts against the fading grey and green of the cloudless sky. Having landed right-side up, he has a rather nice view of his new surroundings. A road, more pothole and crack than flat surface, stretches away from his low perspective, sidewalks and street lamps in equal states of ruin. He spots rare shards of billboards here and there, any and all paint either removed or stripped by the elements. Not a single building looks unmarred, and most are little more than heaps of ruined building materials.

  Douglas finds himself in what undoubtedly used to be a bustling metropolis. The building right in front of him is a couple dozen floors at the minimum; a towering skyscraper that now has a rather dangerous looking tilt. Next to it is a pile of concrete slabs, which is sitting next to a barren park, its fountain long dry and its benches tripped. The road he is lying on seems to be made from square pieces of stone, covered by a crumbling layer of what looks to be a dark asphalt. White lumps lie here and there, their pristine cleanliness a shining contrast with the downtrodden environment.

  Looking around, Douglas sees that the highest building is the one he is lying next to. The amount of damage done to the infrastructure also seems to increase further down the street. A moment of clear thought lets Douglas realize that the crater he saw is probably in that direction. The pull on his mind is that way also. Clacking his teeth in contentment at his own reasoning and mental deductions, the armored skull fails to realize that the white shapes - slightly covered in red slime - around him have started moving.

  Having finished with looking around for now, Douglas turns his focus inwards. He had told the blue messages to shut up during the harrowing escape from the space station, and he hadn’t bothered to check them since. He’d been too busy with piecing his own bones together, once again, directly after the escape, and had sunken into a spell shape studying and self-enchanting frenzy shortly after. He’d never bothered checking them even after his ship was blown to bits, nor when he shot through the planet’s atmosphere, leaving a trail of ablated bone in his wake. So Douglas allows the furiously blinking blue dot to tell him what is going on, ignoring the shifting white and red shapes all around him.

  [ Microgravity Manoeuvring lvl 5 ]

  [ Spell shaping II lvl 19 ]

  [ Mana Sense II lvl 20 ]

  [ Mana Sense II has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 1/6 ]

  [ Meditation II lvl 19 ]

  [ Mana Control II lvl 20 ]

  [ Mana Control II has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 2/6 ]

  [ Mana Stone Production II lvl 16 ]

  [ Magical Animation II lvl 6 ]

  [ Shattered; ended ]

  [ Mana Reserve; you have embedded mana stone inside your body, increasing your mana pool. +50 MP ]

  [ Mana Reserve; increased. +538 MP ]

  [ Outfit ‘nWear sVital autoSuit’ is no longer present ]

  [ Shattered ]

  [ Mana Reserve; drained. ]

  [ Meditation II lvl 20 ]

  [ Meditation II has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 3/6 ]

  [ Shattered; ended ]

  [ Mana Stone Production II lvl 19 ]

  [ Mana Stone Production II lvl 20 ]

  [ Mana Stone Production II has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 4/6 ]

  [ Magical Animation II lvl 7 ]

  [ Mana Reserve; increased +21,137 MP ]

  [ Shattered ]

  [ Mana Reserve; decreased +945 MP ]

  [ Spell Shaping II lvl 20 ]

  [ Spell Shaping II has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 5/6 ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 33 slain; 19,574,453 xp earned ]

  [ Arcane skeleton lvl 18 2,278,400/2,278,400 xp earned ]

  [ Arcane skeleton lvl 19 3,686,400/3,686,400 xp earned ]

  [ Arcane skeleton lvl 20 5,964,800/5,964,800 xp earned ]

  With a clarity of mind that only comes occasionally, Douglas reads the blue screens as they catch up to recent events. The first section of skill gains, regeneration, and mana stone creation all happened inside the ship. The bright light then destroyed his suit, his ship, his skeleton and his mana reserves. Also, he isn’t sure why he thinks this, but he feels like Katare is fine, somehow or another.

  His previous melancholic mood comes back with a vengeance, and he is pulled into his past again. His escape from the space station was a harrowing one; the chaotic assault by Histaff Behemoths make him wonder how he got out of that situation with his skull intact. The long period inside the white ship’s cockpit that followed allowed him to calm down a bit.

  Thinking back on his time floating through space in the white ship, he recalls memories with much clarity. The sudden burst of activity as alarms went off before everything went white was rather unexpected, but the long period of floating through empty space while he slowly regenerated his bones once again was calming. The long tumbling in empty space let him do some more studying and mana stone production. This then came to an end when he fell through the atmosphere of the planet, and the rest is recent history. He had simply lost all of his bones, again, when burning up in the atmosphere. And then he ended up lying somewhere, buried in the rubble, his neck itching something fierce.

  The tingle at the back of his neck informs him that he is regenerating once again, hopefully for real this time. The skull feels irritated about the fact that his mana stone filled bones are all gone again, and he doesn’t think that he can get the fragments back this time. He will have to regrow his entire body the hard way, once again. For the first time in his undead life, Douglas feels a bone-weary tiredness. Normally, he doesn't really care, but the clearness of thought that seems to come with each level-up allows him to be thoroughly sick of losing his body time and time again.

  Maybe he should engrave his bones this time, and not just stuff them with compacted magical power. Briefly wondering why he didn’t do so before, he makes up his mind to never lose a single shred of the calcium he regenerates this time. His skull is filled with mana stone and engraved runes of resilience both, and Douglas vows to make his entire being as seemingly indestructible as his skull.

  His internal promise is immediately broken when one of the many white lumps lying around approaches him, sniffs him once with its undulating nostrils, and swallows him. The small shard of regenerated atlas bone is immediately dissolved as Douglas once again ends up inside a Histaff Reworked. Douglas is still mentally slapping himself for not using a spell to get away from the slowly moving monster when he feels something odd. The mana that was flowing towards his neck, slowly regenerating his neck, actually sticks to the slime around him. His Mana Sense skill tells him that where usually the mana would have vanished into nothingness right after leaving his body, it instead sticks around for a bit. The faint cloud of blue at the back of his skull takes an entire minute to dissipate.

&
nbsp; Then another idea hits Douglas. The Magical Animation skill that came with his Associate Arcanist class has been extremely underutilized so far. While singly reinforcing a ship or his own skull might be seen as a weird form of animation when looked at correctly, he knows that the spell can do so much more. This, combined with his affinity for bones, calcium, and the awe he feels for the mechanically amazing bone-plated beasts lead him to a rather sudden desire. Douglas wants to ride a Histaff Reworked; he wants to own one that listens to his every whim.

  Unfortunately, Douglas fails to notice that the mental level-up clarity has largely faded at this point. So with his new goal in mind, he casts the same spell that got him free last time. Credit where credit is due, in his attempt to secure the being’s precious outer shell, he puts less mana into the dephlogistonation spell than last time. He fails to take into account that his skull is still stuffed full of mana stone, tripling his otherwise already large mana pool. Instead of vaporizing the entire Reworked, the spell merely makes it burst like a watermelon, shattering each piece of bone the beast possesses into small fragments.

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 25 slain; 746,221 xp earned ]

  [ Arcane skeleton lvl 21 8,243,200/8,243,200 xp earned ]

  Mentally sighing to himself as his mind receives another moment of clear thought, Douglas prepares for a fight. He knows he might want to keep at least one of the many, many, many Histaff Reworked now surrounding him in one piece, though it doesn’t look like the beasts themselves are keen on the idea. Still in the process of forming another fireball, Douglas’s still falling skull is swarmed by at least a hundred bone-white beasts.

  Chapter Three – Beautiful on the Inside

  [ Name: Douglas ]

  [ Race: Arcane skeleton ]

  [ Level: 21 (404,288/11,929,600) ]

  [ Class: Associate Arcanist 5/6, Craftsman 1/4, Labourer 0/4, Fighter 0/4 ]

  [ HP: 380 ][ HP/h: 0.18 ]

  [ MP: 25/1515 ][ MP/h: 13 ]

  [ STR: 10 ]

  [ AGI: 7 ]

  [ CON: 46 ]

  [ VIT: 22 ]

  [ INT: 57 ]

  [ WIS: 79 ]

  [ Arcane Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]

  [ Darkvision ]

  [ Universal Language ]

  [ Mana Reserve; +945 MP ]

  [ Armor; +45 CON ]

  [ Shattered; CON max 1, VIT max 1 ]

  Douglas is unsure how to proceed. His mana is nearly all gone, his teeth are chipped and ruined, and he hasn’t managed to kill a single thing so far. Around him are the marks of an amazing battle. An already ruined hovercar is missing a large chunk of its trunk, the edges of the rusted metal seemingly pulled upwards like flames. A half-rotted street lamp is covered in frost, a small flurry of snowflakes appearing around the supercooled light source. In another part of the ruined urban landscape, the street is dented in waves, like giant ripples in a stone pond.

  Douglas is the source of all of these weird phenomena, his four battle spells having seen more use in the last few minutes than in his entire life combined. But despite the impressive carnage he has wrought, very little damage has been done to the monsters encircling him. Only strategically cast spells have kept him from the gullet of yet another Reworked, but Douglas knows this can’t last. His mana is nearly gone, for one. Secondly, the diversely-shaped bone beasts are learning. The moment Douglas tries to cast a spell efficiently, the circle starts to appear in the air. It only took three spells before the Reworked started to avoid the front and back faces of the floating spell shapes, moving out of their reach with a concerted and coordinated effort.

  And lastly, one of the precariously tilting buildings didn’t enjoy being pelted with out of control earth spells very much and is slowly keeling over. The slight bit of slyness and cunning inside Douglas's mana stone filled skull tells him he should keep the monsters around it occupied for a bit longer. He isn’t totally sure why, but the skull has decided to listen to the trickle of instinct.

  “YOU ALL SHOULD BECOME MY PETS! I WILL PET YOU AND GROOM YOU AND FEED YOU! I LOVE YOUR BONES. YOU USE THEM WRONG BUT I STILL LOVE YOU ALL.” And for some reason, Douglas thinks that verbally taunting the multiton buggers is a good idea. Forcefully pounding these randomly appearing thoughts into the fairly recent thought-to-speech part of his forehead still feels as odd as ever. It seems to work, though, as he is capturing plenty of attention. The urge to move his jawbone along with the sounds the part of the amazingly complex spell shape in his forehead is producing is somewhat baffling to the skull. He isn’t completely stupid, though, so he very carefully trickles mana into another fireball spell, making sure to create a beautiful floating rendition of the dephlogistonate spell circle in front of himself.

  Even though he hasn’t managed to do any permanent damage to the white monsters surrounding him, Douglas does not think this fight a waste of time. The beasts have shown a rather eerie ability to learn and adapt, forcing Douglas to adapt alongside the Histaff Reworked. For example, the magical skull can now move a spell mid-cast. The hulking beasts go into an absolute frenzy, stumbling into each other and trampling each other underfoot in order to avoid facing the spell circle directly.

  “I WILL GIVE YOU CHEW TOYS AND GIVE YOU MANA STONES AND WILL ALWAYS KEEP YOUR BEAUTIFUL SHELLS POLISHE-” Distracted by casting and yelling at the same time, Douglas fails to note that their reactions are rather exaggerated, even going so far as to damage each other in order to avoid the spell shape. Douglas has managed to hit one of his assailants with a fireball early on, and the relatively massive amounts of damage the small globe of fire had done to the white beast has undoubtedly been a shock to the collective. And just when the fireball is about to go off, a slight sprinkle of gravel lands around the fighting crowd. This small smattering of loose debris is then followed by an entire skyscraper.

  Instead of slowly keeling over as one would expect from such a massive erection, the building comes crashing down like a house of lead cards. The cheap way of manufacturing the mass housing building, in combination with years of being exposed to the elements, a thorough scrubbing of all biological matter, and now a substantial amount of deeply reaching magical damage makes the entire thing collapse within seconds.

  Where previously a red mushroom cloud of vaporised and boiling slime rose up around Douglas, now an opaque front of cloying dust envelops the ruined city. Douglas is oddly relieved as he is buried in a small mountain of rubble. His eye sockets fill with crumbled concrete as long rods of reinforcement scrape against his skull. The world returns to blackness and calm as the newly flattened piece of previously vertical architecture settles into its new horizontal position. Buried under rubble, Douglas gloats at his accomplishments for a bit, reveling in his pyrrhic victory.

  [ New skill learned; Yelling lvl 1 ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 15 slain; 50,926 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 32 slain; 1,982,173 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 23 slain; 301,726 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 29 slain; 1,009,172 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 12 slain; 10,937 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 19 slain; 321,620 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 21 slain; 708,360 xp earned ]

  [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 34 slain; 19,927,546 xp earned ]

  [ Arcane skeleton lvl 22 11,929,600/11,929,600 xp earned ]

  The burst of clarity makes him wonder if this had been such a good idea. To his great surprise, his slightly smarter self doesn’t find anything wrong with his previous course of action. Usually, this clarity comes with some embarrassment at his previous efforts. Now, though, the only thing he can fault himself on is what he had been yelling. All bones are beautiful, after all, no matter if they are internal, external, or they're all you have. There is no such thing as using bones wrong — even the breaking of bone is just an opportunity to grow more bones, after all.


  Douglas doesn’t dwell on the past, however. He reasons that his dumb self will probably just sit inside the rubble for a few years, counting grains of sand or something, unless his now slightly smarter self sets something in motion. Then there is the issue that even though his mostly accidental murder of eight Histaff Reworked provided him with a lot of experience, it only helped him level up a single time. With a vicious grin, Douglas realizes that this might not be a problem; there is an entire world filled with the beasties at his disposal, after all. His slightly happy mood fades when he remembers that he has access to the mana hand spell, and that applying this particular spell shape would have made all previous fights a lot easier, if not a lot easier to get away from.

  Five minutes later, the level-up rush fades, and Douglas’s thoughts return to their methodical pace once again. He would have started counting grains of sand if it weren’t for the simple plan inside his head. Bringing up the extremely simple spell shape associated with the mana hand spell, the buried skull starts trying to make some room. He is covered in a combination of large prefabbed walls, smaller bits of crumbled concrete, and a lot of fine dust. He manages to clear his blocked vision after only half an hour of patiently lifting individual particles of debris from his orbital cavities. His eye flames had been smothered by solid matter, a sensation that turned out to be uncomfortable on a deep level to the skeleton.